words at the ica: poor. old. tired. horse.

i’ve had few words to say myself about this exhi­bi­tion, which seems to have slipped under my radar, prob­a­bly with all the upheaval of try­ing to rebuild this web­site again from scratch, and my recent focus on image.

text-based art in the 1960s was relat­ed to the con­crete poet­ry move­ment, con­cep­tu­al art, and lat­er had ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the con­cep­tion of images, not as rep­re­sen­ta­tion, but texts in them­selves, the idea that art work is pri­mar­i­ly a sig­ni­fy­ing prac­tice has dom­i­nat­ed dis­course with­in the visu­al arts since then. the work on show here is a very broad church indeed from philip gus­ton through to ian hamil­ton fin­lay